DStar at the Dayton Hamvention

[beischel]

Dayton will have another huge DStar presence this weekend. Please join the hundreds of DStar users visiting the Dayton Hamvention at the DStar activities, meet-and-greets, forums, and vendors.

Here’s the updated list of activities at the Dayton Hamvention®

All items are subject to change. Please check Home - D-STAR Info for the latest information.

Schedule of Events

Thursday, May 16th

7:00PM – Pre-Hamvention D-STAR Meet, Greet, and Eyeball QSO

Marion’s Piazza 1320 N Fairfield Rd, Beavercreek, OH 45432 (39:43.596N 084:03.192W) (937) 429-3393

Friday, May 17th

8:00AM – D-STAR InfoCon 2013 (Registration Required)

Drury Inn Ballroom

A three hour class for beginning and more experienced D-STAR users to help you get started and get the most from your D-STAR radio. An Icom ID-31A will be given away to one lucky class participant during the class.

12:45PM – D-STAR Forum

Forum Room 1 Hara Arena

Moderator: Robin Cutshaw, AA4RC

Speakers: John Davis, WB4QDX, Brian Hoyer, K7UDR, John Hays, K7VE, Robin Cutshaw, AA4RC

D-STAR continues to grow in popularity with over one thousand interconnected gateways and over twenty-five thousand registered users. The last year has seen new hardware and software offerings that continue to expand the capabilities of this already feature rich protocol. The speakers for this forum will review the things you might have missed in the last year and announce some exciting new hardware and software.

7:00PM – Friday Night D-STAR

Drury Inn Ballroom, 6616 Miller Lane, Dayton, OH 45414

Exciting list of speakers

Opportunity to speak to other D-STAR enthusiasts

Icom ID-51A to be given away


DSTAR booths at the Hamvention®

Bird Technologies Group / TX RX Systems
Booths# BA0413 BA0414

ICOM America, Inc.
Booths# HA0008 HA0009 HA0010 HA0033 HA0034 HA0035 HA0036 HA0037

Internet Labs, Inc.
Booths# HA0029

RT Systems
Booth# NH0246

NW Digital Radio
Booth# EH0515

Local Dayton DStar Repeaters

W8RTL
Dayton
147.1050 +0.6000 (C)
443.0500 +5.0000 (B)
Excellent handheld coverage at HARA and all of Dayton

W8HEQ
Dayton
145.2700 -0.6000 (C)
444.0875 +5.0000 (B)
(In northeast suburb of Huber Heights) Recommend high power with hand held outdoors at Hamvention® HARA Arena.

For travelers coming in there are numerous DStar repeaters north and south of Dayton so there is plenty of coverage while traveling in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana and Northern Kentucky.

Dayton Hamvention® Reflector REF038C and XRF038C

The Dayton D-STAR gateway will be linked to D-Extra X-Reflector XRF038C during Hamvention weekend. D-Plus REF038C will also be available for the weekend. Both compliments of the Northern Ohio Digital Interconnect Group (NODIG).

Use 446.1000 Digital Code Squelch CSQL use #13 as a D-STAR simplex frequency at Hamvention®.

 

[beischel]

DStar hopping at Dayton

The Dayton DStar activities were again packed as they were last year. DStar training was "sold-out" on Friday. Vendors ran out of the new ID-51s on Friday. HRO was able to get 50 more on Saturday but sold-out. DStar with other vendors were also flying off the shelves, but they were taking orders.

As an FYI Universal Radio in Columbus had the ID-51 for $569 and supposedly they will honor that price the rest of this week. There is a free battery holder that you can get under a rebate program on the 51.

Robin is working on some exciting new products and the NW Digital group presented their new data radio with DStar capability.

Registered DStar users now number over 50,000 as reported at the forum. The number on the U.S. website is mostly for the Gateway 2 registrations and does not included the users on the other Gateway, but reported to be over 50,000.

Also, the actual repeater count for DStar worldwide is now over 2,000 repeaters (2M, 440, 1.2G). The websites they noted are showing the Gateway count and not the number of repeaters actually attached which is over 2,000. No other digital system is even close to the number of DStar repeaters worldwide.

The forum also showcased the EMCOMM capabilities of D-RATS and that it is not even being fully utilized with DStar.

DStar was again the hit of the digital crowd for VHF/UHF digital work.

Also the FreeDV/Codec2 group were there and talked about a lot of things to come with that technology, like a design for an open source HT. Looks interesting.

So from the excitement at Dayton for digital voice as all DStar and Free/DV Codec2.

 

[N8OHU]

I know thete is at least one 10 meter D-Star repeater over in Germany as well as a MotoTRBO repeater thst is bridged to D-Star, so those two should be in that number. Nice to see the numbers growing lile that; it shows that despite the growth of DMR, D-Star is still the digital voice mode of choice for a majority of digitally minded hams.

 

[beischel]

Funny you mentioned, Mototrbo. We looked all over the Hamvention to see if they had an information booth on Mototrbo/DMR and could not find any representation at all. The closest I came to seeing anything was a guy wearing a blue Mototrobo shirt walking through the fleamarket.

BTW, the Yaesu booth and their digital radio was pretty lightly attended. They had one woman there to talk about their digital offering who said they still have no repeaters.

My friend asked then who do you talk to? She responded, you can talk direct, radio to radio. Yeah, that's not going to get people to spend over $500 for a radio.

I think the Yaesu thing is really DOA just like their WIRES internet/radio linking that no one uses.

Ray at Icom said they have offered Alinco some help to develop a DStar add-on for their radios. Let's hope Alinco takes them up on the offer.

 

[mikewazowski]

Funny you mentioned, Mototrbo. We looked all over the Hamvention to see if they had an information booth on Mototrbo/DMR and could not find any representation at all. The closest I came to seeing anything was a guy wearing a blue Mototrobo shirt walking through the fleamarket.

DMR-MARC had a booth inside beside the ARRL area.

Can't say I saw any D-Star booths but than again, I wasn't looking very hard and might have missed them.

There was also 3 repeaters onsite and two repeaters in the Dayton area which covered Hara quite well.

 

[beischel]

Really? Walked through the ARRL area four times and never noticed it.

The DStar booth was in the main Arena area. It had the huge DStar banner above it and the huge crowd all around it. Robin Cutshaw AA4RC also had his DStar booth in the main area. NW Digital was in one of the other halls, but cannot remember which one. The DStar controller folks were in the fleamarket area.

No one brought on-site repeaters this year since all the DStar repeaters in the area are plenty to cover Hara and well most of the Tri-State area.

 

[KG4INW]

Did you miss this? http://forums.radioreference.com/digital-voice-amateur-use/266756-dmr-marc-dayton-info.html

I wasn't there but DMR is picking up speed quickly.

 

[mikewazowski]

Really? Walked through the ARRL area four times and never noticed it.

Yup, it was there.

The additional repeaters weren't for coverage. Both DCI and DMR-MARC had repeaters setup on their networks and the Michigan group brought 2 repeaters to cover their groups.

I guess you could say it was more for capacity than coverage.

 

[beischel]

Yup, it was there.

The additional repeaters weren't for coverage. Both DCI and DMR-MARC had repeaters setup on their networks and the Michigan group brought 2 repeaters to cover their groups.

I guess you could say it was more for capacity than coverage.

OK, did not know it had capacity issues requiring so many repeaters. In any case, it has a long way to go before it catches up to DStar which is continuing its explosive growth.

The new generation of DStar radios, the ID-31 and ID-51 have the entire repeater database loaded and can find the closest repeater using the built-in GPS. No programming required except putting in your call for the first time.

Saw one guy with a DMR radio at the Hamvention.

Well we'll see what happens with DV in ham radio as the years go on. Right now it is so fragmented with DStar well at the top, then smatterings of DMR, NXDN, P25, the Yaesu thing and FreeDV/Codec2 and who knows what else.

 

[mikewazowski]

I should have phrased that better. The repeaters were there to provide talkgroups for the various clubs. DCI had a repeater which carries their groups, DMARC had one for their groups and the Michigan guys brought a couple for their groups. There were no capacity issues.
I didn't see one DStar radio anywhere but saw several DMR portables from different vendors. Our group used DMR on simplex for the event. Also saw 5 repeaters out in the flea market for sale.
I might have missed the DStar equipment as it looks like every other ham radio out there. I'm sure if I knew the different icon models that have DStar, I might have recognized a few.

 

[N8OHU]

That's right; must not have idle chit-chat on the NA talkgroup. It might give someone listening online the wrong impression about DMR.

 

[k3cfc]

Really? Walked through the ARRL area four times and never noticed it.

The DStar booth was in the main Arena area. It had the huge DStar banner above it and the huge crowd all around it. Robin Cutshaw AA4RC also had his DStar booth in the main area. NW Digital was in one of the other halls, but cannot remember which one. The DStar controller folks were in the fleamarket area.

No one brought on-site repeaters this year since all the DStar repeaters in the area are plenty to cover Hara and well most of the Tri-State area.

With all of the arguing about DSTAR and such some pictures from Dayton would put this to rest.

 

[beischel]

I should have phrased that better. The repeaters were there to provide talkgroups for the various clubs. DCI had a repeater which carries their groups, DMARC had one for their groups and the Michigan guys brought a couple for their groups. There were no capacity issues.
I didn't see one DStar radio anywhere but saw several DMR portables from different vendors. Our group used DMR on simplex for the event. Also saw 5 repeaters out in the flea market for sale.
I might have missed the DStar equipment as it looks like every other ham radio out there. I'm sure if I knew the different icon models that have DStar, I might have recognized a few.

OK, well I guess I was thinking the group would be small enough that everyone would want to be in the same virtual place to talk to each. DStar appears to be a bit more inclusive and social where the members of the clubs like to intermix.

But someone made the suggestion that pics be posted so I will see if I can come up with some. Didn't take as many pictures this year.

 

[N8OHU]

OK, well I guess I was thinking the group would be small enough that everyone would want to be in the same virtual place to talk to each. DStar appears to be a bit more inclusive and social where the members of the clubs like to intermix.

But someone made the suggestion that pics be posted so I will see if I can come up with some. Didn't take as many pictures this year.

Actually, they probably do, but they don't use a single repeater so they aren't keying up every repeater in North America to talk to someome back home.

 

[beischel]

Hamvention DStar Pics

Here are a few pictures of the DStar booth in the main arena and the DStar forum on Friday. Plus a bunch of other pics of the Hamvention. I'll try to get a few more and post them to the site.

WB8NUT Photo Album - Dayton Hamvention 2013

 

[racin06]

Nice information in this thread. I'm about to pull the trigger on the ID-51. Wow...D-STAR is not up to 2000 repeaters and 50,000+ users? That is incredible growth. I don't understand the resistance by some regarding D-STAR. Bottom line...D-STAR is here to stay.

 

[k3cfc]

Here are a few pictures of the DStar booth in the main arena and the DStar forum on Friday. Plus a bunch of other pics of the Hamvention. I'll try to get a few more and post them to the site.

WB8NUT Photo Album - Dayton Hamvention 2013

Well there ya go. if they missed D star there either blind or just want something to complain about.

Thank you for the pictures.

 

[doofoo]

What's the best vendor/price on the ID-31a and ID-51a? I am in process of building a D-Star repeater here in MD but had sold my 92ad a while back. Need to get one before I finish the repeater setup.

Hoping there are still some Dayton sales going on. I checked Universal Radio but didn't see mention of one.

 

[beischel]

OK, the guy at the Universal booth told me they were going to honor that price all week ($569) on the 51. Maybe you have to call. Most other vendors had it for $589. HRO did price matching if you mentioned the Universal price to them. They were also giving away a conventional battery holder for the 51 via an Icom rebate.

The ID-31 was under $300. There was a rebate on that as I recall.

I spoke with an Icom representative who indicated that they were working with Japan to try and get the prices down on radios and repeaters.

The handhelds are pricey, but the sub $500 on the ID880H is fair for that radio. It is an incredible dual-band radio. Wide receive capability and super-fast scan rate. Will scan FM, AM, DStar all at the same time.

So we'll see what happens but with all the third-party DStar development out there, the equipment to build a DStar repeater is very inexpensive and why the growth in DStar infrastructure world-wide is still skyrocketing. New user registrations on Gateway 2 skyrocketed after the Hamvention. DStar radio were flying off the shelves with the 51 out of stock on Friday, though HRO secured 50 more for Saturday.